Vegans: is it possible to be vegan and pro-abortion?!
but if you are vegan, can you support abortion? according to PETA, killing an animal is murder........so does an unhatched baby chick get privelege over an unborn child?
i'm interested to hear justifications here. i think if you are vegan and pro abortion, you are the ultimate hypocrite
Answers: i put this question to vegans because they generally value animal life and the right for animals to exist.
but if you are vegan, can you support abortion? according to PETA, killing an animal is murder........so does an unhatched baby chick get privelege over an unborn child?
i'm interested to hear justifications here. i think if you are vegan and pro abortion, you are the ultimate hypocrite
Interesting thought, Bob. I'll go one further and ask about people who are worried about the rain forests and cutting down trees and displacing spotted tree owls but supporing the "right" to "choose" - I wonder about that, too.
Certainly it is possible to be vegan (for health reasons) and to be pro-choice and value a female "animal's" right to control her body.
Hypocrisy is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.
Well I guess I'm the ultimate hypocrite then., although I would say I am pro-choice, not pro-abortion. I don't say I agree with abortion in all cases (i.e.as a method of birth control) but every case is different and I certainly have no right to dictate that every pregnant woman should have that child regardless. What about rape victims, or people who know that the foetus is severely disabled? Should they be forced to go through pregnancy & possibly ruin their lives, and the lives of those close to them because you think abortion is wrong?
I don't think that a foetus is the same as a living, breathing animal, and I don't see abortion as murder. I am sure there are people who disagree with me, but it's one of those black/white things....the two sides will never agree.ometimes there is no viable alternative to abortion, there are viable alternatives to animal products. And I don't think the two things (being vegan and pro-choice) are mutually exclusive at all.
Abortion is a very, very personal area and I don't think I have the right to cast judgements on anyone that has one.
ETA:
No it's not ok to eat eggs, although they are not living, breathing animals have you seen what happens to the laying chickens? They are usually (not always I admit) kept in appalling conditions, and their life spans are severely shortened by constant laying. And when the chicks are hatched....ever wonder what happens to male chicks who can't lay eggs? A word of advice...don't.
So no, I don't eat eggs.
ETA:
I think you're grouping everyone together here. There are probably some vegans who are pro choice and some who are pro life. Saying we are all inconsistent is like saying all blond women are stupid....it's just not true.
We all have different views on what 'life' actually represents and to me personally, an undeveloped foetus incapable of sustaining life by itself does not represent 'life' to me, therefore abortion is not murder.
ETA again:
Some people have put a lot more succintly what I am trying to put across.
Just as a aside, I'd like to know what your views are on the death penalty as I've met a lot of vehemently pro-life people who are just as strongly in favour of the death penalty. That to me seems to be the ultimate hypocrisy so I'd be interested to know what your views on that are, seeing as you are intent on finding hypocrites.
What a silly question. You've only posed the question as a way for you to call people hypocrites. Generally, the purpose of asking someone else what they believe is to obtain information, not to supply a flimsy facade for voicing your own opinion.
Merriam-webster's dictionary defines "vegan" as
a strict vegetarian who consumes no animal food or dairy products; also : one who abstains from using animal products (as leather)
This doesn't say anything about abortion standpoints.
Merriam-webster's defines "hypocrite" as
a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings.
Since there is nothing about veganism that includes beliefs on human fetuses, no standpoint any vegan can have on abortion would qualify them as a hypocrite.
See what happens when you use logic, instead of your feelings, as the basis of an argument?
Also, it's "pro-choice," not "pro-abortion." Your relabeling to reflect your opinion does nothing to lend legitimacy to your question. Perhaps it would help my argument if I referred to you as "anti-choice," since you seem to want to make everyone's decisions for them.
I am vegan and pro-choice. You see it all comes down to consent. The woman carrying the fetus consents to the abortion therefore it's okay. The fetus has no concept of living and has never experienced anything "human" so it cannot possibly have emotions or feelings (those are a learned trait) therefore, it's cool.
However I don't think an abortion should be performed after the first trimester except in special cases where the fetus may endanger the woman's life.
I can only answer for myself- to say 'Vegans think.....' is generalising a set of people who may only have one thing in common- and there are lots of reasons for doing that one thing.
I am a vegan because a) meat and dairy is bad for me. b) Eating meat is bad for health, the environment, and global economics. c) I object to the way that modern farm animals are treated. If I had the resources I would keep my own chickens and eat the eggs.
I support a womans right to choose whether or not to give birth. Saying 'pro-abortion' makes it sound like an abortion is something one does for fun.
All children should be wanted. We should offer as much support as possible to any woman who wants to keep her child in difficult circumstances. However, to deny the option to women in third world countries is to condemn both the mother and her children (of which there will be many) to a life of poverty.
And by the way, making abortions illegal won't stop them. Desperate women will find their own way. My grandmother should have eight children, but only had four. She used her knitting needles on herself.
OK, a couple of points before i answer the question. First, I do not have to justify my stance on anything, and my answer is not a justification.
Second, vegans are not necessarily PETA supporters - I'd go so far as to say most are not - so quoting or paraphrasing PETA is irrelevant.
I'm vegan and I'm very much pro-choice; the two things have nothing to do with each other.
I'm pro-choice because I value life - the lives of the thousands of women who would die without legal abortion, and the lives of the countless numbers of women who die when they cannot obtain abortions.
In countries where abortion is illegal, women have abortions anyway - dangerous, life threatening and sometimes fatal abortions. This used to happen in countries where abortion is legal, and still does where it is legal but in reality hard to get.
It is women without the money to buy safe abortions - something wealthy women have always been able to do, legal abortion or no - who died and continue to die. I care about their lives so I'm pro-choice.
I'm old enough to remember the time before abortion was legal in my country. I remember the whispers about a friend's teenage cousin who died following a botched illegal abortion, and friends par-boiling themselves in hot baths because they feared they were pregnant.
Stories of knitting needles, coat hangers, and other implements being used by desperate women to self-abort are not just horror stories, they are true
I am strongly in favour of women being in control of their own lives and destinies, and part of this is control over their own fertility. With the best will in the world contraception sometimes fails. It is ludicrous to talk, as some people do, of women using abortion as contraception - abortion is a hideous experience.
I'm vegan because I choose to minimise my contribution to animal suffering. I'm pro-choice because I value the lives of women and their right to choose.
I am not a hypocrite - hypocrisy means claiming to have higher standards than you in fact have, and I do not do that.
im a vegan, and i support abortion. I think this is because veganism is mostly about an animals will to live, and we dont want to be a part of their suffering. I think there is a huge difference between live animals being tortured, and abortion. The baby is unborn, and most of the time it would go through more suffereing if it were born. For example my friends father had an affair with a woman who then became pregnant. I know that if she didnt get an abortion; the baby's life would be completely miserable because of the situation it was born in. Basically i think it is possible to be vegan and pro abortion, because they are slightly different circumstances.
I'm very VEGAN. And I am pro-abortion.
I'm not a hypocrite.
Don't hurt my feelings.
Hello. I am a juicy vegan with a PhD in...woah, where's my slotted spoon? I feel a disturbance in my bowels...
Wait what was I saying? Oh, um, so yeah I pretty much feel that I'm the most coolest person in the V&V section.
PETA does not value human life, so they dont care what you do with your babies
i suppose technically you could be a pro-choice vegan...your not actually eating the baby...
People view the abortion debate with different moral systems, just like people view eating meat with different moral systems.
Vegans aren't just against the act of taking a life, they're against using an animal for your own benefit - basically, as a slave. Most people are also vegans for ecological reasons - animals use up land and resources that could be used to save lives by feeding starving masses the world over. This is an extreme simplification, but that's the ethics behind the decision to become vegan.
Vegans are not "for" abortion - and no one in the world is "pro-abortion". Instead, vegans place a greater value on the quality of life that child and mother would have (similar to the quality of life of animals - which is why they don't eat eggs or milk), rather than the very act of death itself.
Certainly it is possible. If a vegan is vegan for health reasons, and they are not an ethical vegan, they may be pro-choice.
I, however, am an ethical vegan, but am also very firm in my pro-choice beliefs. I, personally would NEVER have an abortion, but I think the option should be there for women who need it. I think it's better for them to be going to a safe, healthy clinic (legally!) better than being extremely desperate and having an illegal abortion done, just because some people decided to take away free-will.
=)
Actually, I'm vegan and pro-life.
Nobody is pro-abortion. It is entirely possible, however to be vegan and pro-choice. Part of veganism is respecting the sovereignty of animals over their own bodies and their own lives, and there's nothing hypocritical about extending that respect to a human woman.
First of all, nobody is pro-abortion. It's one thing the fetus freaks keep forgetting. The pro-choice movement believes 1) in preventing unwanted pregnancies and 2) that every child should be wanted. It's a choice I hope I never have to make.
Second, the eggs from hens in battery facilities are never fertilized, so they cannot possibly hatch. The best analogy is that they're like menstrual waste. Most vegans object to consuming eggs not because the eggs are "abortions," but because of the way the hens are treated.
Vegans do not believe animals should be exploited or used for human enjoyment, and this includes human beings. Women should not be required to carry a child they don't want, nor should they be forced to be incubators for childless couples. A woman who chooses to give up her child for adoption is certainly admirable, but it should be HER decision, not yours, not the government's, not any clergyperson's, not anyone else's. HERS!!!!
I care for actual lives over potential lives, thank you very much.
And the true hypocrites are those who claim to be pro-life but eat dead animals.